Blaugust is done! I made it through! I posted every day at least something, and while I had my mega threads (EverQuest Legends and Poetry Slammers) I think overall I had a good mix of real life, D&D, EQL, and me just making stuff (and meta-talking about making stuff). Pride, I suppose, can live with just having finished the challenge of posting every day.
That said, it is very easy to say to myself . . . yes, but what did it accomplish? To what ends? Honestly, I'm not sure.
One thing is for sure, with a week left of posting I thought to myself, oh man, I better talk about my Poetry Slammers game while I have a little bit of a wider audience, but ultimately, I think it generated very minimal traction. It wasn't like people were peeling off their skin with excitement saying YES, I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW! On the other hand, I'm glad I have a little developer log I can point to. Hopefully it shows that it was more than just vibe-coding. I was finally designing a dream from five years ago that I couldn't possibly have done on my own without these tools.
And as for all my EverQuest Legends posts, I probably didn't post anything earth shattering, but perhaps someday someone will Google "How to cast an illusion on your pet" or "Beastlord / Cleric / Shadow Knight" and stumble upon my journey. Hard to tell, but I don't think my build will ever be the flavor of the month.
As for real life posts and D&D stuff, I probably would have made those posts anyway. If I hadn't done Blaugust though, I think I would have had a bit of FOMO from not doing it. Probably what I should have done was just signed up and stuck to my normal 3 or 4 posts a month! But that push to get the 31 posts in 31 days goal is what it's all about! Glad I stuck with it, even through a bout with COVID.
Anyway, I don't know what I'm trying to get at here . . . I'm just riffing. The bottom line is that I ended up tracking about 234,000 hits to the site for the month, which is pretty average, if not below average, but I suppose I did garner more opportunities for future blog traffic. The big accomplishment for the blog that happened over Blaugust was hitting the +7,000,000 hits mark. That's kind of fun. (me when it takes almost 20 years to do what some random YouTube / TikTok site does in a day). Of course, and I mean this with all sincerity . . . it's never really been about the hits. That's just a fun number to look at.
Funny enough, after 31 posts, there are still things that would have been cool to talk about more:
- I started Vibe Coding a VR interface for EverQuest Legends. It's faked but works pretty well for being faked.
- I played my song Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck to a group of people at the cancer institute, and it seemed to go over well. I'd love to talk more about that project and eventually get the music out there.
- I added a set of throwing knives to my axe throwing repertoire. I haven't fully figured out the best way to throw them yet.
- A sale on PVE Survival Games just hit the Steam Store, and so Dylan and I are probably going to go a bit crazy.
- Food, cats, TV Shows, Movies, etc.
So, there you have it. I made it. I'm not sure why I made it. I'll probably do more of it! Thanks for reading and as always . . .
Happy Dueling